That's the central theme for the play "Is He Dead?" at the Arvada Center, according to the program. And the play's premise certainly looks as if it might address the question.

"Is He Dead?" is a farcical melodrama, where the good and bad characters have no depth and the twists and turns of the plot are easily anticipated. The play is set in mid-19th century France, performed in period costume on period scenery, which sets a certain aesthetic expectation for the production.

The value of one's artwork is an interesting and valuable idea on which to base a play and certainly worth exploring, but the promised examination of ideas never materialized. Instead, the play, which was considered bad when Mark Twain wrote it, was not really improved upon by David Ives' update.

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Nor was it addressed under Michael Perlman's direction, which offered a parade of distasteful stereotypes, made worse by the standout contemporary acting style of Steven Cole Hughes, who played artist Jean-Francois Millet.

The characters, heavily in debt, cook up a scheme in which the well-known artist pretends to die so the value of his paintings will increase. Once his death is faked, Millet returns as his "sister," embodying the cliched cross-dressing male. The filthy-rich Bastien Andre (played by John Arp) then pursues Millet, and as you can already guess, hijinks ensue. Millet's falsehood is discovered by his lady love, and once the plot unravels, everything ties up happily.

Overall, the piece was an amalgamation of styles, ideas and goofy add-ons that did not work well together. If the entire production had been thoughtfully put together and the acting had been a consistently unified kind of caricature, it might have worked.

But the inconsistencies only served to make the stereotypes ugly and disturbing rather than funny. After so many years of such depictions, it is time to be more thoughtful when that kind of characterization is put out there.

And to top it off, anthem rock music was played between scenes and at intermission, creating a jarring clash of aesthetics and giving one the sense nobody thought about congruity or making the entire experience coherent. The play ended with the cast launching into a karaoke version of a song by the '80s band Journey, which, although fun for the actors, was incoherent for the audience. At that moment, as an audience member, I felt the director was not taking me seriously and was presenting the most random assortment of stuff, thrown together for his own amusement.

If no serious thought is given to a production, and choices are either random or stereotyped, the show is serving the people making it rather than the paying audience.

I would like to honor the efforts put in by the cast, who professionally and expertly fulfilled their misguided director. But, unfortunately, the whole production seemed to be put together by someone who had no clear vision for the play and hid behind stereotype rather than thoughtful interpretations of the play's various ethnicities.

This one pushed all my "I want theater to be meaningful" buttons. I could make no sense of the reason for this production despite the assertions in the program that the play was about the worth of the artist's work. The show did get some laughs the night I was there, but they seemed light and tentative.

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